


Silent Majority

by Marmosette



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005), Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-25
Updated: 2012-07-25
Packaged: 2017-11-10 18:01:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/469127
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Marmosette/pseuds/Marmosette
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Why do these scary aliens wear black suits? Why? Why is that the uniform? Well, they must have got it from someone, right?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Silent Majority

**Author's Note:**

> As it stands, it's a taster, a test, an intro... If it works, there will be more. Oh yes.

They had captured her once, she knew. The first-hand knowledge of it was gone from her head, but she’d been told. She remembered some fighting. She remembered it was something around the time Melody had been born. And, among other proofs, she still had the suit.

Rory liked the suit. Rory liked most things, it was true. But the suit was different. It was easy to see why he liked her skirts - _her legs_ \- but the suit had trousers. They weren’t even tight. They were just long, loose, shrouding her legs but paradoxically making them seem even longer. Black, of course. The jacket, turning her into a cipher, just another office worker, an official, professional, faceless...something. Something vaguely ominous, if one cared to take it that way. And maybe Rory did.

Without realising it, though, River had a similar suit. Well, it wasn’t really similar. It had a wider neckline, and restrained ruffles, and a peplum, and it was more aggressive. Amy could fade into the background in hers. River was never going to be background. River was in-your-face, teasing, power and just a hint of madness. If it made Amy remember that she was a mother, and make her itch to reprimand her, then that was fair enough.

But now she was following two of the strange, terrible creatures down the hallway, and wondering how many times she had followed them before, and if she had ever wondered about black suits before. She probably had. It had that nasty nip of familiarity, the feeling of being completely novel while deceptively obvious, convinced everyone had already had the thought even while wondering why no one had ever said it before. And in this situation there was always the probability that it _had_ all happened before - the chase, the capture, the orders, the soundless journey in the car with blacked-out windows, all of it surrounded by people wearing black suits.

“I’ve been here before, haven’t I,” Amy said into the quiet. There was no point trying to break away or run. Escape didn’t work like that. They weren’t going to kill her. They never did, because they didn’t need to. 

She didn’t really expect an answer. “Yes,” one of them said. She jumped, flinching and looking back, finding two towering figures behind her, wearing black suits. Black suits, white shirts, black ties. Two legs, two arms, one head, but not remotely human, with pale, strange skin stretched over bulbous heads and yet no visible mouth to produce a voice. “What _are_ you?” she gasped, trying run, and bumping into someone in front of her.

She stumbled, seeing two towering figures in front of her, walking calmly, not even turning as she bumped into their black backs. “Keep walking,” one of them said. She felt hands on her arms steadying her, as oddly deformed as the creatures in front of her. White shirt cuffs and black jacket sleeves nudged at the back of her mind, and she kept walking. Why were they dressed like this? Was it something to do with why she was wearing the black suit, too? She knew Rory liked it, anyway.

The creatures paused in front of a doorway, and knocked. One of them actually knocked. It raised its large, lumpy hand, bent the two long fingers and the middle...flippery-thing, and knocked them against the door three times. The sound made seemed so normal. The whole situation felt surreal. These creatures, wearing black suits; her own black suit, so unlike the rest of her clothes; the wood-paneled door.

“Come in,” came a calm, human voice from inside. Amy wanted to scream, to warn him, whoever he was, but the door was opened and she was hurried inside.

“Hello, Miss Pond. Excuse me, Mrs. Williams.” The man at the desk looked up at her briefly and smiled, seeming impervious to her captors. “Have a seat.”

Confused by his indifference to her situation, Amy forgot to panic as she was pushed forward and down into a chair in front of the desk. One of her captors went around to stand behind the man, who seemed to be reading through a file on his desk. “What the _hell_ is happening, and who the hell are you?” she demanded.

He looked up again, straightening against the back of his chair and arranging his cuffs. “What is your association with The Doctor?”

Amy stared at him a moment. He, too, was wearing a suit, but his had a fine pinstripe to it, a dark blue tie, and an ivory pocket square. There was a thump behind her, the sound of the door closing, and she turned with a start, but there was no one behind her. She looked back, and screamed. There was a strange, towering creature behind the man, and in spite of the bulbous head and cruel eyes, it was wearing a black suit. And the man at the desk didn’t even glance behind him. But maybe the instinct had left him when he lost his right eye, which was hidden behind an eyepatch that glittered with some kind of metalwork.

“Calm yourself, I know all about my... companion. Answer the question. What is your connection with The Doctor?”

“He’s... he’s my friend. We’re mates,” she said, her eyes still fixed on the creature. “How do _you_ know him?”

“The Doctor and I go way back. I practically grew up with him. Well. _I_ grew up, at any rate. He was already old.”

Amy looked at the man. She couldn’t see any reason to be afraid of him, but still, her heart was pounding. “Yeah? So why are you asking me about him?”

“I don’t mean to upset you, but I have a gift that will make our conversation easier.” He reached into a pocket inside his jacket and pulled something out, extending it toward her across his desk.

It was a small patch, a vaguely-triangular oval of black with the same metalwork as the one he wore. “An eyepatch?” she said as she took it, studying it. “Is this some sort of threat?”

“Try it on,” the man said, smiling again without answering her question. “It will make things quite clear to you.”

Cautiously, Amy held the device up before her face. Without really thinking she wanted to, her fingers had fitted it into place over her right eye, as though it were something she did every morning, as natural as cleaning her teeth. It felt...comfortable. Right. Familiar.

She looked up at the man behind the desk, frowning. “But everything looks the - _oh my God!”_ She jumped out of her chair, staring at the strange, towering creature behind the man. She was feeling her way back toward the door before she realised there was something even more wrong.

The man hadn’t moved from his chair, not even to glance back and see what had frightened her. His eyebrows were raised, but he was looking down at his desk, his one visible eyelid lowered, blinking slowly as the smile melted from his face. He sighed.

“I don’t know who you are, but there’s a... a _thing_ behind you. Whoever you are, just turn around slowly...”

“They’re called ‘The Silence.’ I am aware of them,” he said, his voice breathy, weary. “And now, once again, Mrs Williams, you will be too.”

“What do you mean, ‘again?’” she asked, still backing slowly toward the door.

“We’ve been through this before, you see. The device on your eye is an external memory. Looking at the creatures -”

“Yeah, I know. You can only remember them while you’re looking at one. The Doctor told me.”

“Oh, good. You’ve managed to remember that, this time.” He wiped at his eyelid, sitting forward and folding his hands on his desk. “Sit down.”

“Have we met?” she asked, compromising by standing still. She couldn’t really imagine wanting to move any closer to the creature behind him.

“Several times. But you had no reason to remember me.”

“Are you one of them?”

He sighed again, looking down, then summoning the patience to smile up at her, even if the expression was a bit strained. “Sit down, Mrs Williams.”

“I don’t want to sit down. Not until you tell me what’s going on.”

“The drive allows you to remember seeing the Silence. That really isn’t the right word for them, but it will do. You’ve worn a drive like this before, which may cause some of your uncomfortable feedback memories. The last time, the devices were untested. They contained a piece of weaponry that could be used to kill the wearers. We were careful, this time. I assure you that you are perfectly safe.”

“Then why do I still have this nagging feeling that I should grab the axe by the fire alarm and bury it in that thing’s head?” Amy asked, still tense and poised to run.

“Part of the feedback, I’m afraid. In order to circumvent things during the last infestation, we were forced to plant the suggestion in the minds of all humans that the Silence should all be killed on sight. It thinned the herd, so to speak, until such time as we were able to fix the external drives and render them safe.”

“How do you know they’re safe now when you didn’t catch it the first time? What makes you think your memory’s so much better than mine?”

“You grew up with a time crack in your wall. I grew up with a Tardis in my mind. And the first time, my brother was unavailable to examine the drives. I was thorough, this time. It would take the Doctor to fool me. And I don’t think he was on hand. Do you?”


End file.
